The GOP Needs To Man Up

The Republican Party just released what is supposed to be their big comeback strategy: The Growth & Opportunity Project.: This is the vision for the Republican Party – after getting spanked in November’s presidential election by an unpopular, divisive partisan hack who faced some huge setbacks right before the election, you would think that the GOP has some major retooling to do.

GOP Chairman Reince Priebus has referred to the Growth & Opportunity Project as “an autopsy,” and I for one think Priebus is right on in his description.: The report doesn’t give an impression of a party that is sincerely trying to do what it right for America; it is more along the lines of a political analysis – complete with focus-groups, surveys, and all the right buzzwords – coming from a party elite that wants to deceive people into believing they’re something that they’re not.: They aren’t looking for revival, they’re just dissecting the dead body, searching for confirmation of what they already believe to be true.

It’s kind of sad, really, watching the Republican Party flailing around aimlessly like an emotional teenager trying to find itself.: After the party’s loss in November, the party was sitting in the tub, with a razor blade pensively held above its wrist, but instead of doing the deed, the party chickened out & decided to write down its thoughts in a nice, neat 100-page journal, detailing all of its problems, and how it can overcome them…but there’s still something missing.

The report alludes to the GOP’s strong success when it comes to governorships – 30 of the 50 states have Republican governors.: The report even goes on to state that “[t]hey continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people’s lives better. They routinely win a much larger share of the minority vote than GOP presidential candidates, demonstrating an appeal that goes beyond the base of the Party.”: And in this section of the report, they actually start making some sense…….

But then it seems that the committee that wrote the report got distracted.: After that one short section, it wasn’t about pushing real conservatism anymore, it was about races and sexes and demographics and party staffing.: True conservatism took a back seat to one of the things most Americans hate about politics: election analysis.

But don’t worry, if we just form a “Growth and Opportunity Inclusion Council,” and then hire a Hispanic/Asian/Black woman to run the party, we’re sure to win the next time around.

There are already strong rumblings and rumors that the GOP elites are looking to Jeb Bush to run on the Republican ticket in 2016, and let’s face it: if anyone can save the Republican Party, it’s another Bush.: Really, after President Obama has spent the last 4 years skating by on the “blame Bush” platform, does ANYONE in the Republican Party think another Bush is a winning idea?

The problem with the Republican Party is not that they can’t get the message out come election time.: If the GOP has a problem, it is that they cannot seem to see the true value of conservatism.: Just look at the party’s last two presidential nominees: John “wacko bird” McCain and Mitt Romney, two of the most moderate Republicans in America.: The party still seems to be convinced that they can win with a moderate candidate, if only they can put the right lipstick on the pig.

Let’s face it: the GOP does not have a messaging problem, it has a manhood problem.

Senator Rand Paul just demonstrated a couple of weeks ago to everyone across America the winningest strategy the Republican Party could ever take on: stand up for the Constitution, and do it in a strong, unapologetic fashion.: Paul’s strategy was hugely popular, bringing together millions of Americans from across the political spectrum, and all he was doing was calling out President Obama on his oath of office – to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

But did establishment Republicans learn the right lesson from Rand Paul’s horrendously popular exercise?: Absolutely not.: The very next day, the GOP’s 2008 presidential candidate was on the Senate floor railing against Senator Paul.

And then there’s the Speaker of the House, who this past weekend said that he “absolutely” trusts the man who just got through dragging Boehner through the mud with a series of lies and manipulations on the fiscal cliff and sequester.: Boehner then echoed President Obama’s sentiment that America is not facing an immediate debt crisis; the crisis, he said, is anywhere from two to four years out – he fails to realize, however, that 2-4 years qualifies as “immediate” in government terms – especially when the Republican budget proposal takes 10 years to balance, growing government all the while.

This is the problem with the modern Republican Party: When the rubber meets the road, they refuse to stand for conservatism.

Most people can sniff out a hypocrite from a mile away, and the modern GOP elite is full of hypocrites.: They talk about their desire for small-government conservatism, but they fail to follow through each and every time.: Conservatives are either leaving the party or staying home on election day because there’s nothing there to motivate them.: America’s leading Republicans just don’t seem to be man enough to stand up on principle and fight for what’s right, come hell or high water.